Testing web applications has always been a bit tricky, normally requiring starting a web server for your application and making real HTTP requests to it. This module allows you to test Catalyst web applications but does not require a server or issue HTTP requests. Instead, it passes the HTTP request object directly to Catalyst. Thus you do not need to use a real hostname: "http://localhost/" will do. However, this is optional. The following two lines of code do exactly the same thing:

$mech->get_ok('/action');
$mech->get_ok('http://localhost/action');

Links which do not begin with / or are not for localhost can be handled as normal Web requests - this is handy if you have an external single sign-on system. You must set allow_external to true for this:

$mech->allow_external(1);

You can also test a remote server by setting the environment variable CATALYST_SERVER; for example:

$ CATALYST_SERVER=http://example.com/myapp prove -l t

will run the same tests on the application running at http://example.com/myapp regardless of whether or not you specify http:://localhost for Test::WWW::Mechanize::Catalyst.

Furthermore, if you set CATALYST_SERVER, the server will be regarded as a remote server even if your links point to localhost. Thus, you can use Test::WWW::Mechanize::Catalyst to test your live webserver running on your local machine, if you need to test aspects of your deployment environment (for example, configuration options in an http.conf file) instead of just the Catalyst request handling.

This makes testing fast and easy. Test::WWW::Mechanize provides functions for common web testing scenarios. For example:

To use this module you must pass it the name of the application. See the SYNOPSIS above.

Note that Catalyst has a special development feature: the debug screen. By default this module will treat responses which are the debug screen as failures. If you actually want to test debug screens, please use:

METHODS

allow_external

Links which do not begin with / or are not for localhost can be handled as normal Web requests - this is handy if you have an external single sign-on system. You must set allow_external to true for this:

$mech->allow_external(1);

head2 catalyst_app

The name of the Catalyst app which we are testing against. Read-only.

host

The host value to set the "Host:" HTTP header to, if none is present already in the request. If not set (default) then Catalyst::Test will set this to localhost:80

clear_host

Unset the host attribute.

has_host

Do we have a value set for the host attribute

$mech->get_ok($url, [ \%LWP_options ,] $desc)

A wrapper around WWW::Mechanize's get(), with similar options, except the second argument needs to be a hash reference, not a hash. Returns true or false.

$mech->title_is( $str [, $desc ] )

Tells if the title of the page is the given string.

$mech->title_is( "Invoice Summary" );

$mech->title_like( $regex [, $desc ] )

Tells if the title of the page matches the given regex.

$mech->title_like( qr/Invoices for (.+)/

$mech->title_unlike( $regex [, $desc ] )

Tells if the title of the page does NOT match the given regex.

$mech->title_unlike( qr/Invoices for (.+)/

$mech->content_is( $str [, $desc ] )

Tells if the content of the page matches the given string.

$mech->content_contains( $str [, $desc ] )

Tells if the content of the page contains $str.

$mech->content_lacks( $str [, $desc ] )

Tells if the content of the page lacks $str.

$mech->content_like( $regex [, $desc ] )

Tells if the content of the page matches $regex.

$mech->content_unlike( $regex [, $desc ] )

Tells if the content of the page does NOT match $regex.

$mech->page_links_ok( [ $desc ] )

Follow all links on the current page and test for HTTP status 200

$mech->page_links_ok('Check all links');

$mech->page_links_content_like( $regex,[ $desc ] )

Follow all links on the current page and test their contents for $regex.

$mech->page_links_content_unlike( $regex,[ $desc ] )

Follow all links on the current page and test their contents do not contain the specified regex.

$mech->page_links_content_unlike(qr/Restricted/,
'Check all links do not contain Restricted');

$mech->links_ok( $links [, $desc ] )

Check the current page for specified links and test for HTTP status 200. The links may be specified as a reference to an array containing WWW::Mechanize::Link objects, an array of URLs, or a scalar URL name.

$mech->link_status_is( $links, $status [, $desc ] )

Check the current page for specified links and test for HTTP status passed. The links may be specified as a reference to an array containing WWW::Mechanize::Link objects, an array of URLs, or a scalar URL name.

$mech->link_status_isnt( $links, $status [, $desc ] )

Check the current page for specified links and test for HTTP status passed. The links may be specified as a reference to an array containing WWW::Mechanize::Link objects, an array of URLs, or a scalar URL name.

$mech->link_content_like( $links, $regex [, $desc ] )

Check the current page for specified links and test the content of each against $regex. The links may be specified as a reference to an array containing WWW::Mechanize::Link objects, an array of URLs, or a scalar URL name.

$mech->link_content_unlike( $links, $regex [, $desc ] )

Check the current page for specified links and test that the content of each does not match $regex. The links may be specified as a reference to an array containing WWW::Mechanize::Link objects, an array of URLs, or a scalar URL name.

follow_link_ok( \%parms [, $comment] )

Makes a follow_link() call and executes tests on the results. The link must be found, and then followed successfully. Otherwise, this test fails.

%parms is a hashref containing the params to pass to follow_link(). Note that the params to follow_link() are a hash whereas the parms to this function are a hashref. You have to call this function like:

$agent->follow_link_ok( {n=>3}, "looking for 3rd link" );

As with other test functions, $comment is optional. If it is supplied then it will display when running the test harness in verbose mode.

Returns true value if the specified link was found and followed successfully. The HTTP::Response object returned by follow_link() is not available.

CAVEATS

External Redirects and allow_external

If you use non-fully qualified urls in your test scripts (i.e. anything without a host, such as ->get_ok( "/foo") ) and your app redirects to an external URL, expect to be bitten once you come back to your application's urls (it will try to request them on the remote server). This is due to a limitation in WWW::Mechanize.

One workaround for this is that if you are expecting to redirect to an external site, clone the TWMC object and use the cloned object for the external redirect.